PEARL — The East Central baseball team is one win away from making school history.
The defending Class 5A state champion Hornets slipped past Saltillo 4-1 in game one of the current Class 5A state championship finals Wednesday night here at Trustmark Park thanks to a dominating pitching performance by senior standout and Southern miss signee T.J. Dunsford.
East Central is looking for the first-ever back-to-back state championships in any team sport in school history, and the Hornets can accomplish just that with a win in game two in this best-of-three series Friday night.
“It’s always nice to get that first game, and that’s a very good team we are facing,” veteran Hornet head coach Bo Long said. “T.J. was as good as he could possibly be, and they still had some quality at-bats. I couldn’t be more happy with how we played tonight.”
Dunsford, the “Class 5A Mr. Baseball”, took a one-hit shutout into the seventh stanza with that 4-0 lead, before the Tigers managed to scratch out their lone run on an error, a walk and a single. But that would be the lone flaw on Dunsford’s resume as he moved to 12-1 overall on the hill this season.
The Hornets took a 1-0 lead it would never relinquish in the top of the second stanza as Andrew Marble scored on a wild pitch. Marble had reached base earlier in the inning leading off the frame with a single.
That score stood up until the top of the sixth stanza, when East Central added a trio of runs to basically put the game away.
Junior Nate Trochessett led off the frame being hit by a pitch. Just minutes later, he scored on a single by Marble after Trochessett had reached second and then third on two separate wild pitches.
Up 2-0, Anthony Tanner walked, and then three batters later Brandt Dickerson tallied a two-run double to score both Marble and Tanner and make it 4-0.
Dunsford worked through the bottom of the seventh to pick up the three-run win. He scattered two hits and struck out eight while walking two in picking up the win.
“It feels amazing. I think if we’d have lost this game we would have felt a lot of weight on our back going into game two,” Dunsford said. “I trust the guys behind me when I’m on the mound, and they were all outstanding tonight.”
Saltillo ace Drake Douglas also went the distance, allowing six hits and striking out 10 in taking the loss.
Logan Terry and Marble each had two hits apiece to pace the Hornets at the plate, and one of Terry’s hits was a double. Dickerson’s two RBIs were a game-high.
Game two is set for Friday night at 7 p.m.
Curtis Rockwell has almost three decades of experience at four different daily newspapers across South Mississippi, specializing in Sports and live music.
